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Lincoln versus Douglas it wasn't. But what last week's much ballyhooed presidential debate lacked in rhetorical brilliance, it made up for in a surfeit of surprises inspired by the striking differences in demeanor of the combatants. From start to finish, Mitt Romney was animated, assertive, and aggressive. Barack Obama acted as if he were badly in need of a good night's sleep, astonishingly lackluster for virtually the entire 90 minutes and downright timid. Long before the debate called it quits, it was evident that Romney was landing all the heavy blows, and the president's response to the onslaught was to look a little sorrowful and befuddled, as if someone had swiped his tricycle from right under his nose.

The real puzzle is what got into Obama to persuade him that taking a drubbing with gentlemanly restraint would impress the citizenry as presidential. Maybe he thought it was too unseemly to answer Romney in kind, even when his opponent kept serving up a patent whopper, like the claim that Obama had promised to cut the deficit in half but instead had "doubled it." That's just plain wrong. The deficit last fiscal year is estimated at $1.1 trillion, roughly what it was the year he was sworn in as president.

Every schoolboy, however deficient in math, knows even-steven is not double, but the gaffe drew not a peep from Obama. Exaggeration (to be polite) in political debate comes with the territory, but typically it's enthusiastically employed by both sides. Obama's feeble rebuttal on those rare occasions when he summoned up the energy to offer one, left viewers with the not unreasonable impression that he was woefully unprepared, even rather clueless.

The president's diffidence did not go unnoticed by the electorate (we doubt that anyone harbored the conviction that it might, given this tell-all-with-the speed-of-sound 24/7 world we live in). Quickie polls by CNN and CBS declared Romney the overwhelming winner. The CNN survey of folks who viewed the debate on TV pinned the victor label on the Republican contender by a huge margin: 67% against a meager 25% for Obama. The CBS sounding of undecided voters came down in favor of the former Massachusetts governor by 40% to 22% for the president (the rest took pity on Obama and called it a tie).

It was a great night for Mitt Romney, whose campaign appeared in desperate straits, and a miserable setback for Barack Obama, who had seemed to be on his way to another four years in the White House. It's difficult to gauge how enduring, as well as how substantial, the bounce turns out to be. But it inarguably transforms the election from an almost sure thing for the incumbent to something a good less certain. Obama's poor showing in the debate cost him something like eight points in the wagering on Intrade, the online gambling site, where at last look he was still the favorite of 65% of the betting crowd.

Conceivably, the unanticipated drop in the unemployment rate in September, to 7.8% from 8.1%—the first time since the nadir of the great recession back in January 2009 that joblessness was below 8%—will restore a bit of the gloss that Obama enjoyed before his dismal performance in the debate.

We're merely stating the obvious—one of the things we excel at—when we observe it's now anybody's race. In past election years, we could at least consult with the stock market to help take the measure of which way the political wind is blowing. This year, alas, the market seems bound and determined to sit out the quadrennial event and concentrate on the alarming shrinkage in global trade and concern about the ineffable pain that the fiscal cliff may inflict.

NOT EVERYONE WAS HAPPY to see the unexpectedly positive employment report. Jack Welch, the former top dog at GE, for one, was quick on the draw, tweeting that the job numbers were "unbelievable" and that "these Chicago guys will do anything. Can't debate, so change numbers."

We couldn't suppress a smirk when we read those words, since during his long reign from 1981 until 2001 at GE he was often accused of indulging in just such shenanigans to keep the company's remarkable string of quarterly higher earnings intact. Nor was our reaction unique. Among others, the irrepressible Barry Ritholtz, the main man a Fusion IQ, found Welch's charges "unintentionally ironic."

For as Barry points out, after the dot-com crash of 2000 suspicions were rife that GE Capital had acted as "an opaque leveraged hedge fund that could always be counted on to help" its parent ring up higher profits if only by a penny. The eventual upshot was that early in the post-Welch era GE had to settle accounting-fraud charges leveled by the SEC.

Not, in fact, that September employment was anywhere near as robust as the headline tally would suggest. According to that pair of data demons, Philippa Dunne and Doug Henwood—who put out the invaluable Liscio Report—"mediocre" is the proper description for the September payroll tally, released Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the so-called household survey showed outsize gains, Philippa and Doug caution it's quite a volatile yardstick and you shouldn't draw conclusions from one month's results.

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research believes the big jump of 873,000 jobs added in the household reading "was almost certainly a statistical fluke" and, in any case, quite a contrast to the 114,000 new jobs added via the establishment measuring rod. As Dean points out, though, it's not unprecedented to have large monthly additions to the employment totals that are somewhat out of whack with other economic indicators, citing the 649,000 gain in jobs in November 2007, a month before the recession began, and the loss of 640,000 jobs in May 2000, while the economy was still booming.

Of the 114,000 jobs added last month, 110,000 were in the private sector. What Doug and Philippa call "the eat, drink and get sick" group, namely bars and restaurants, plus health care, accounted for 52% of the employment gains overall. Manufacturing was down some 16,000 slots, and there were 2,000 fewer temps, often regarded as a precursor of months to come. Upward revisions of back months were notably strong: August by 46,000 slots, July by 40,000.

All and then some of these revisions came via the 101,000 added in the local government education category. What the Liscio duo calls "excitable types" profess to see evidence of political manipulation, which Philippa and Doug pooh-pooh. They suggest that those "excitable types" take due note that the birth/death model, a natural if those pesky bureaucrats were out to rig the count, subtracted 9,000 jobs last month.

Adjusted to match the establishment concept, the 873,000 gain in jobs by the household count is pared down to 294,000, still a rather hefty number. As our Liscio Report friends sum it all up: a humdrum payroll reading and a much stronger household tally. They repeat their warning about the big swings in household counts from month to month, and caution that September's strength could be undone this month.

They take due note of the fact that Bernanke & Co. look carefully at measures of labor-market tightness and wage pressures and reckon that if the 0.3% earnings gain last month and the drop in the jobless rate don't prove to be anomalies, we could see the end of monetary ease before the tentative Fed schedule of 2015. Which they wisely advise "is something to keep an eye on—not something to get worked up over right now."

YOU'D NORMALLY THINK THAT if anyone recognized the power of supply and demand as a force to be reckoned with in markets, it would be denizens of Wall Street. And while it has been the vogue these days to ignore such boring fundamentals in high-frequency trading in equities, commodities have traditionally been highly sensitive to such tangible influences as crop yields, stockpiling and the like. So what, pray tell, is holding up the price of crude oil despite a significant increase in supply and a softening of demand?

The most voracious consumer of oil in its many derivative guises is the good old U.S.A. And, for the first time in many a year, U. S. output has been growing by the proverbial leaps and bounds. In the latest reported week, production mounted by 11, 000 barrels a day to 6.52 million, the highest level in 15 years. Meanwhile, demand has eased by 0.3% to 18.3 million barrels, a new low since April.

In most parts of the country gasoline prices have been kiting higher, often topping $4 a gallon. Problems in refineries have been exacerbating the squeeze in California particularly, where prices at the pump have gotten as high as $4.50 for regular. But the real concern is that trouble in the Middle East -- say, an outbreak of hostilities between Iran and Israel -- might temporarily affect supply.

Yet recent reports from Iran indicate the country's in perilous shape because of the increasing pinch of sanctions and is likely as not to have to delay its mad pursuit of nuclear weapons or risk the implosion of its economy. And given his decline in popularity, it's always possible that Obama might choose to drive down the price of gasoline by feeding crude oil into the market from this nation's sizable strategic reserves.

Admittedly, there's more than a little conjecture in all this. But the bottom line for us, anyway, is that crude, which slipped under $90 again at week's end, still has ample room on the downside.